1 Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to a liquid composition that is suited for use in image formation using the inkjet recording method, an ink set combining the liquid composition and ink, and an image forming method using said liquid composition and ink set.
2 Description of the Related Art
An inkjet recording method refers to a method in which droplets of ink are expelled from small holes such that the ink will adhere to a recording medium consisting of paper, for example. For the ink used in this method, ink comprising various different coloring agents dissolved or dispersed in water or a medium comprising water and various organic solvents are generally known. Ink of various colors, i.e., yellow, cyan, magenta, black, red, blue and green, is commercially available for the reproduction of color images.
Ink used for inkjet recording is required to dry quickly in order to achieve fast recording (15 ppm or more) and printing on regular paper. In an attempt to provide ink that dries quickly, organic solvents that have a relatively high volatility have been used to improve the drying property.
However, because the inkjet method involves expulsion of ink droplets from small holes, the problem arises that the holes become clogged with dried ink. Because the improvement of the drying property and the prevention of clogging are opposing objectives, a balance between the two is currently achieved by means of a maintenance mechanism to prevent the ink from drying, but given the increasing demand for faster printing speeds, achieving these two objectives to an equal extent has become an important task.
On the other hand, U.S. Pat. No. 5,618,338, for example, proposes a technology to cause a liquid composition containing a specific substance to adhere to the image formation area, in addition to the ink, from the viewpoint of improving the quality of the recorded images, but this technology is not capable of completely achieving the two objectives described above. In addition, said patent makes no mention the balanced achievement of these objectives.